Descent
by Dwimordene
Summary: 2007 movieverse compatible. ROTF Trailer AU challenge: Because every picture is worth a thousand different words.
1. The Sword of Damocles

**Prologue: The Sword of Damocles**

_The fringes of galactic space by and large were quiet places. Far from the core with its ancient stars and civilizations, the cooler outskirts of the galaxy were home to but few young species who built their comfortably insular civilizations secure in their ignorance of the wider universe. _

_Sol system, however, as its inhabitants called it when they needed to call it anything other than "home," had lately come to a certain prominence – or was coming to it, slowly, as self-exiled citizens of Cybertron looked to the heavens and an older light and sent their messages – urgent, desperate, hopeful, weary, wondering – homeward._

_Even with subspace messaging, it might take twenty years or even longer for a message to arrive at its destination, assuming it fell afoul of neither mishap nor malice. So when an unexpected pair of comets arrived in system, a bare year and a half after Mission City, it took everyone by surprise..._

* * *

**Author's Note**: One of the great disappointments of _Revenge of the Fallen _was that in comparison to the trailers released, the actual film failed to take advantage of the promise these little two minute sequences generated. The trailers are actually better pieces of drama than the film itself, and beg the question: what other stories could they have supported than the one we actually got?

In light of this, I have undertaken to create and write to an AU trailer challenge. The rules I've set myself are:

1) Pick one of the trailers released for _Revenge of the Fallen _and develop an alternative sequel based on that trailer

2) Use all the scenes in one of the trailers: if it is in the trailer, it has to be somewhere in the AU

3) Must make some use of the term "the fallen"

4) Movie one is presupposed; while retcons are permissible that change the _meaning _of the film, no factual alterations are permitted.

5) No more than 4000 words per chapter (personal limit)

I chose the teaser trailer: http://www dot youtube dot com backslash watch?v=X2nNP2Y8pyw

This is a WiP; I'm hoping this will pan out, but it's going to be a long, slow haul.


	2. Growing Pains

**Chapter one: Growing Pains**

The trail of lecture halls, libraries, and residency halls that was UC Davis sprawled over miles of concrete and carefully placed lawns, all of them gleaming in the pale afternoon sun of a lingering summer. October had never felt so good, and with midterms nearly at an end and a long holiday upcoming, the impulse to procrastinate had rarely been so strong, as evidenced by the spread of students out upon the lawns, pretending to look at textbooks.

Not everyone, however, was so tempted.

"Mmmf. Oh... God." A hand groped for curtains long since drawn and tried to douse that last little gap where they met and parted, and through which the sun shone. Sam Witwicky flinched away from that line of light, and laid a forearm over his eyes. His head ached still, and after a few moments, he felt about on his bed until his fingers touched plastic. Raising the phone directly overhead, he let his other arm slip from his face as he squinted at the time: three-thirty. Two hours and one class missed. "Crap."

With a sigh, Sam levered himself up and swung down off his lofted bed and onto his desk chair below. At least he'd already taken the midterm in biology, so the fact that he'd missed the first round of new and exciting lectures on the internal structures of fungi left him somewhat less than devastated. He sank down onto his chair and stared at the Excedrin bottle sitting on his desk, debating a moment. Only for a moment, however, before he sighed, shook out another caplet, and swallowed it dry.

Bracing himself then, Sam turned on his desk lamp, wincing despite himself, but he resolutely settled an elbow to either side of the calculus textbook there, laid his head in his hands, and began reading through the explanations of differential equations for only the millionth time since they'd begun this unit. One day, it would make sense. Alternately, he would fail the midterm tomorrow, and go talk to the dean about the wisdom of pursuing this particular course.

He'd been at it for perhaps two hours, not counting periodic spells of unconsciousness, when his phone rang. Sam jerked, then sighed and clambered back up onto his chair to snatch his phone from the bed where he'd left it. He flipped it open. "Yeah?" he said distractedly into the receiver.

"It's five thirty," said the familiar voice on the other end of the line. Sam, who had already settled back in his chair, and was wiping at the drool spot on his book, sighed.

"What about it, 'Bee?"

"You haven't left your room yet." His guardian sounded faintly accusatory.

"Um, no. Pretty definitely haven't done that, unless I've been walking in my sleep."

"Usually, you try to beat the dinner crowd."

"Well, I was thinking I'd try the opposite strategy tonight, you know – go late, make nice to the cooks and the janitors, get a little extra from the tin cans they feed us out of," he said, as he turned the page.

"Are you well? You sound... tired," his guardian declared, clearly suspicious. "As if you just woke up."

"I was studying by osmosis. It's very relaxing," Sam replied, glibly.

"Sam, you're not well."

"'Bee, it's midterms," he said, absently, staring at the sinuous integral curves. "There's caffeine, there's stress, there's dorm rooms and bad food, and I think Ratchet might even go into shock about how many microbes blow through the air ducts on campus. Every university student feels like crap this time of year. It's tradition."

"You haven't been well for the past month and a half," the Autobot protested. "You have headaches all the time and you're exhausted!"

"I did the student health services thing, and they said it's probably nothing or it's an exciting case of not-swine flu." He laid down a nice line of numbers and symbols on a piece of scratch paper. "Their prescription is to drink fluids and take aspirin for the headache."

His cell phone gave a short, unsatisfied electronic warble that once upon a time could only have come from a sound-mixing studio in Burbank. "Sam, you don't feel right."

"You're telling me. And I'm gonna feel a lot worse if I flunk this midterm." Sam wrote a few more lines, then paused, sighed, and erased them. "I don't suppose," he asked, "that your avatar could take this test for me? You all slay differential equations for breakfast..."

There was a brief pause, then: "We don't eat breakfast."

"But you slay differential equations, right? You know calculus?"

"I slay _Decepticons._ Calculus I can calculate, but I don't take tests," came the dry response.

_Better_, Sam thought, though aloud, he said only, "Well, that's it, then. I'm totally flunking." He paused a moment, then loudly closed the book. "Since I am, I think I'll see about doing that on a full stomach. Maybe osmosis works better by inhalation – yeah, gonna go try that."

"Do you want a ride to Woodstock's?" Bumblebee asked immediately.

"After all the trouble we had finding you a parking place? No way," Sam said, as he stuffed his book and a binder full of paper and exercises into his backpack. "I'll ride my bike over."

"Is that wise? Sam, you've had how many accidents in the last three weeks?"

"Look, it's flu season, and I get headaches when I'm sick and tired. Or when I'm tired. Or when I'm studying twenty-four seven. Sometimes, I don't watch where I'm going when those things obtain. Don't worry, 'Bee, I'm not gonna flip over my handlebars. I need alien surveillance to do that."

Another electronic warble, though this one sounded less worried and more exasperated. "You're never going to let that one go, are you?" his guardian complained, though Sam thought he could detect a certain fondness despite that.

"Nope." Grabbing a clothespin from the drawer of his desk, Sam quickly rolled the right leg of his jeans up and pinned it. Slapping his pockets 'til he found his keys and the wallet, with its ID card, attached to them, he braced himself and flung open his dorm room door to the world without. "Don't wait up or anything: I'm taking my books. Might hit the library afterward."

"Take the phone, and call me when you're leaving the restaurant."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Yes, mom."

"Please, Sam, I know it's been almost two years, but Barricade – "

"Still MIA, yeah, roger, copy and all that. Okay, I'm at the bike racks in three minutes, and enjoying the Aggie discount in ten. Call me if you change your mind about taking my test."

So saying, and wishing his headache were so easily relieved as a two ton robot, Sam hung up. He took the elevator, rather than the stairs, just because a nice smooth ride, rather than the jolting effects of gravity, seemed preferable, and then ducked his head as he exited into the afternoon sun and made for the bike racks. There, he crammed his helmet on, and fumbled the key twice, swearing under his breath. At last, however, he was on his way, and he sighed softly, partly in relief, partly in frustration.

Much as he didn't need 'Bee breathing metaphorically down his neck – his guardian really could, in some ways, be just as bad as, if not worse than, his mother – he had to admit, this was probably the sickest he'd been since he'd gotten chicken pox as a kid. The splitting headaches, nervous exhaustion, his newfound, entertaining clumsiness that had earned him some bruises he would once have considered awe-inspiring, if he hadn't been through Mission City – he was sick of it all. He was tired of feeling like he was fifty. His parents were fifty, and he didn't think they were nearly so miserable, so really – how was this fair? His first semester in college, and he felt like he'd been hit by a car half the time – and considering that he had a relatively good idea of how that felt, he wasn't exaggerating. Too much, anyway.

_Could be worse_, he reminded himself. _You could be flunking more than calculus._ He'd managed to keep up in his other classes, and in the Intro to Engineering for Non-majors course he'd taken only somewhat on a whim, he was doing fairly well. He'd found he had a 'knack' for the subject – apparently, he was only deficient compared to professionals, Mikaela, and mechanical alien life forms.

So really, he was going to be fine. He just had to scrape past this one class with something in the low C range. _You survived alien armageddon; calculus is not going to win,_ he told himself, and winced when he jumped his bike off the sidewalk to cut down a service road, heading north for Russell Street. If only he could lose the damn headache that had become his near constant companion...

But he could handle it, even so. He was going to handle it. Tomorrow morning, Sir Samuel was going to slay the evil beast, calculitis. And then he was going to sally forth and deliver himself and his tale of intellectual valor to his damsel undistressed, who hopefully would see fit to reward him anyway. Yeah.

* * *

As Sam headed off in search of food and alternate study space, the yellow Camaro parked on the edge of the Primero Grove lot 'stretched' its sensors: for a brief moment, the whole world 'lit up' to it in a swirling pattern of energies and vibrations. Amid all that splendor, one signature stood out – the boy on his bike cut through that slipstream of sensation, oblivious to it all, and to his guardian's attention.

Bumblebee vented very, very gently, and the world 'dimmed' as he ceased scanning and checked his link to Sam. The Autobot really shouldn't have been on campus at all: UC Davis had a general policy denying freshmen the right to bring cars on campus, save in special circumstances. Needless to say, the federal minders assigned to the Autobots and the Witwickys had persuaded the university that Sam qualified as an exceptional case, and had further ensured that 'Bee was assigned the lot closest to his ward's residence hall. Unfortunately, there was simply nothing to be done about the fact that parking was a precious commodity on campus, and lot twenty-two was open to visitors as well as apartment residents. The result was as fierce a battle to claim and occupy a space as 'Bee had seen since Tyger Pax.

Given the constraints that his current disguise placed on his ability to stay in close proximity to his ward, he had convinced Sam and his parents to let Ratchet 'tag' Sam with an active transmitter tied to Bumblebee's comm system, so that 'Bee could at least keep track of him at a distance without actively scanning for him. It wasn't a Cybertronian transmitter – although far more sophisticated and powerful, such would be a dead give-away to any Decepticon in the vicinity. So they'd used something more 'down to Earth,' in Ratchet's words, something less powerful and that wouldn't stand out as of Cybertronian origin. It wouldn't be able to punch through a jamming field in an emergency, but its cessation would serve as warning enough to 'Bee.

Currently, though, he was less concerned about the possibility of Barricade trying to kidnap or kill Sam than he was about his ward's health. Bumblebee had done some reading, consulted Ratchet and several of the human medics now attached to the Autobots' base, all in preparation for Sam's departure from his native Tranquility for Davis and college. As Sam's guardian, he had a stake in being able to recognize when his ward might be unwell and in need of medical help, after all, especially since he could rely on no judgment but his own now that Sam had 'come of age,' as Judy had put it.

All the health manuals humanity could supply, however, had failed to enlighten him on one critical point, and the human medics had not proved any more helpful. For humanity as a whole had failed to take into account the possibility of a species whose predominant sense was electromagnetic reception, which meant that there was nothing that humanity could tell Bumblebee about how sick humans teeked – whether their EM signatures changed in any way that corresponded to illness, whether generally or in ways specific to different diseases. The only thing he knew to look for that he could teek was temperature change – and Sam wasn't reading outside of normal ranges on his IR sensors.

Nevertheless, Sam teeked differently lately, and 'Bee didn't know why. It was subtle, but it was definite, and it was _not _comparable to any signature he'd ever gotten off of another human being. For weeks, he'd tried to convince Sam to seek help, but the boy evidently refused to take his own condition seriously.

And perhaps he was right. Maybe this was a one-time, if persistent, 'glitch' to Sam's wetware systems, one that would leave no permanent effects, and subside on its own. Or maybe it really wasn't as unusual as he thought it was: it could be a normal idiosyncrasy, a mostly harmless possibility unique to Sam. Who was Bumblebee to say? Sam had been living his fleshly existence for nineteen years; he could be expected to have some insight into his own state of being, surely.

Still, the Autobot would welcome tomorrow morning, when Sam would complete his last midterm examination, and the two of them could head back to Tranquility for a week. Then he could have Ratchet check the boy, and he would trust Judy Witwicky's reaction to her child's current condition far more than his own assessment or even Sam's. If she thought he was ill, then he was, and Bumblebee could be done with doubt.

_One more day, _he thought, as he settled in for the night, syncing with the quiet pulse of that transmitter, even as he opened himself out to the sky above._.._

_... where, out beyond the atmosphere, two comets were swiftly approaching. They slid down Earth's gravity well, hurtling towards that point where the sun's rays kissed the curve of the planet, gleaming with atomic brilliance. They passed the moon, and continued onwards, cutting through the darkness at speeds humanity could but dream of. Earth spun on, throwing off a gleaming riptide of magnetic flux that sang like a siren's last warning, and as the comets dove into it, one of them cracked, shedding ice and rock explosively to reveal a hard core of metal, which split and twisted, transforming into a shape far more sleek and deadly. Atmosphere thickened, and both of the unearthly visitors began to glow – the other comet, too, began to shed layers of ice and dross, as they sank towards landing..._

In Paris, the late afternoon bustle slowed to a shocked, dead halt as fire streaked low across the sky in two meteoric tracks. One of them crashed through a bell tower before skidding out for perhaps a half mile through the Tuileries, sending gape-mouthed onlookers scrambling for cover, screaming. And the screams but swelled when that second track bent before ever it hit dirt, and something shot nearly straight up. Engines roared as the object turned back over its own path in a long, tight hairpin loop, and then touched down at the end of the slide out zone.

It was a jet, of sorts – needle-nosed, and of strange design, heat visibly leaching off it in the shimmering of air. A moment it sat there, and then suddenly, it transformed: limbs unfolded from its underside as parts shifted, the enormous being already staggering a few steps forward towards the edge of the depression its companion's landing had hollowed out. One taloned limb sparked at the joints, and the protrusions from its back – the strangely folded edges of its airfoils – twitched erratically. A series of clicks and croons and strange tones emanated from it, as it hunched over the other "meteor." For a little while, nothing happened, but then, with an ear-piercing shriek, the metal form nested in the earth split asunder. Electricity flashed, and metal groaned as, slowly at first, but then with increasing speed, parts rearranged themselves. An arm emerged, and then another; a long line of intricate metal lifted from beneath dorsal plating, then fell open into two beams, swinging loosely. Legs scrabbled as the thing clawed its way out of the pit, only to collapse upon the lip, electricity crawling over its surfaces.

For what appeared to be armored panels were cracked and shredded and blackened with soot; and as the first being attempted to grab a flailing arm, it was sent reeling back by a massive electrical discharge. Its companion gave a long, low whine, then bent its back, its pair of long beams lifting skyward, and it let out an electronic scream the likes of which none on Earth had ever known.

Every cell phone in Paris went off. Television sets went blank. Hearing aids squealed and dogs cowered.

The satellite hanging overhead shrieked that call across the Atlantic, where it blew out an American listening station, and still that signal spread: to Blackberries, to television, and to radio.

In Davis, California, at six in the morning, Sam Witwicky woke up quite suddenly from dreams of living equations. In the parking lot beyond the dorm, Bumblebee squawked.

On a base in Tranquility, Ratchet, on the dawn watch, heard it and immediately flagged an alert.

And in the back alleys of Houston, a police cruiser with an unusual decal shuddered, then seemed to explode as Barricade stood up, turning east towards that signal.

"Fraggit," he muttered. A worried chittering sounded, and Barricade hissed, then glanced down at the 'bot who was lately his partner, and clicked a bit before folding back down into his cruiser form and opening a door. "Get in," he ordered Scorponok, and as soon as the symbiont had scuttled inside, shut his doors fast, turned his lights and sirens on, and burned rubber down the sidestreets.

* * *

**Author's Note: **"teek" - made up word for the act and sensation of feeling the electromagnetic spectrum that Bumblebee came up with in his chapter of _All That You Can't Leave Behind_.


	3. Defensor Hominis

**Chapter two: Defensor Hominis**

" –rench ambassador has made contact: all indications are friendlies so far – "

" – Gröningen is running signal analysis; NBEIRR European division is requesting Los Alamos and NSA coordinate with them and we have Yokohama on the line – "

" –ports no activity yet along the cometary vector. Arecibo team confirms it will sweep that sector as rotation cuts across it."

The emergency response center was packed: every station was in use. The low lights and bright screens threw unflattering radiance on pallid faces, and over the consistent hum of cooling fans and electronics, there was a general air of rush and worry that John Keller remembered well from the last time Cybertronians had come calling.

Two years ago, they'd imagined the SOCCENT attack had to be retaliation by one of the unfriendly regional powers. Strange, that that notion should inspire feelings of nostalgia today, but as Keller stepped on deck, he couldn't help but wish it were something so simple as that, so... manageable: bloody and obscene as the squabbles of Earth's fractious nations were, they paled before the possibility of a Decepticon attack. Genocide was number two on a short list of unsavory objectives Decepticons might have, which was what had brought the men and women in this room, and in seven others like it around the globe, together.

_Time to see_, he thought, grimly, _whether in the face of an imminent hanging, we can all stand together. _For the crest on the wall was not that of the United States of America; nor was it that of Sector Seven, though in fact, it was the old Sector Seven Washington Bureau they now occupied. _Defensor Hominis et Hospitum_, read the motto beneath a pair of stylized stars around which Cybertronian glyphs orbited, and over all of it, the title "Non-Biological Extraterrestrial International Rapid Response": NBEIRR, or "Neighbor," as English, with its knack for acronymic play, had made it.

When Keller had taken office as Secretary of Defense two years ago, in the wake of scandal and resignations, his oldest daughter, Abby, had presented her father with a mug at Christmas to commemorate the occasion.

"What is it?" he'd asked, squinting at the picture, which was rapidly turning into something else as Abby poured coffee into it.

"Leviathan," his daughter had replied, and then smiled at him. "Hobbes's ghost!"

Hobbes's ghost, indeed – the mug sat on his desk, but Leviathan haunted the corridors of power the world over, and made the whole, bloody, dysfunctional system turn.

Enter the three-ton aliens who wanted, essentially, a high tech, cooperative armed response team, beholden to no single power and in service to all, a team that not only avoided the graveyards in the closets of all the world's powers, but which had to operate _normally _without them – a team exorcised of Hobbes's ghost.

Anyone else who had suggested any such thing would've been laughed at or referred contemptuously to the UN; however, something about the fact that they were three-ton aliens, with enough personal fire power to level an American forward operations base without breaking a sweat, and the lure of access to Autobot technology, even if on carefully controlled terms, had perhaps persuaded the world's powers that just this once, they could at least obstruct a little less.

And so here they were – every man and woman in this room, and in the seven others, had sacrificed citizenship and security for a "universal green card" that made them veritable citizens of the world. They'd signed gag orders on military technology for five year stints; they'd taken pay cuts and God alone knew what would happen should they ever try to take their retirement and resettle into a loyalty less large than the one they currently maintained, but here they were. Here they were, facing the problem they'd intended to face – just twenty years too early. They weren't ready – everyone, from the eight regional directors to the technical specialists to the brigade's worth of trained military personnel who'd volunteered, knew that. The diplomatic wing definitely knew it.

Too bad no one had told the universe at large, and if this went to crap, then they might as well all walk straight into a Decepticon barrage because there likely wouldn't be any going home afterwards even if Earth's powers, by some miracle, survived.

Directors, however, could not afford to remind anyone of that, and so, game-face on, Keller crossed the floor to the station of his senior analyst and comm controller.

"What've we got?" he demanded, and Maggie Madsen swiveled in her chair to face him, pulling her headphones down to hang round her neck.

"We've got several supercomputers working on our own translation, among other urgent issues of signals analysis, and you've got Ironhide available, if you want to get his report live instead of reading it," she informed him, even as she proffered a file. Keller took it, flipped briefly through it – the words "emergency alert" and "imminent attack" leapt out at him. Otherwise, besides the basics of who, what, when, and where, the report contained what looked like partial biographies, only with model names and numbers he didn't recognize and which certainly didn't belong to human beings.

"Where is Ironhide, currently?"

"Leaving Turkish airspace with Captain Yilmaz and his team." Keller grunted. Turkey had proven more willing than many to support NBEIRR, which certainly made matters simpler for all of them. So much so that Prime had dispatched Ironhide to Ankara, which served as the major base for both European and Asian NBEIRR operations. At the time, Keller had, frankly, been terrified by Prime's choice, given Ironhide's apparent disinterest in diplomacy. However, as Prime had pointed out, of the four Autobots currently on Earth, Ironhide mounted the heaviest weaponry and armor, edging out even Optimus in the weaponry department. The weapons specialist could actually take down a base by himself in a knock-down fight – a point which tended to deter the predatory from trying their teeth on him.

"Granted," Keller had said, "but does he have the temperament for this? You'll have to forgive me, but Ironhide hasn't ever struck me as particularly... subtle. Or patient."

"He'll have help," had been Prime's response, and he'd sent him Bumblebee's "abbreviated resumé," with its still arm-length list of experience in first contact, infiltration, and policy analysis, and right along the top, the words "Current assignment: support: CIMIC/S9 - Ironhide."

Perhaps Bumblebee's advice had made the difference, or perhaps Keller had been guilty of underestimation, but after a somewhat rocky start, Ironhide had proven unexpectedly capable and he seemed comfortable enough in his new assignment. The Turks seemed comfortable enough with it, too, to judge by the morning's activity.

"It says here that one of the newcomers – Blaster – is injured," Keller said, frowning down at the report. "Have we got Ratchet cleared to go yet?"

"Yes, sir. Travis Air Force Base is cooperating with us and lending a C-17 transport." Keller raised an eyebrow at that, flipped back to the biography section, and perused the "technical specs" portions. One jet, and one... he wasn't sure what, but definitely no lightweights in this crowd. Ratchet wasn't small either, and if he wanted to fit all three of them on a plane...

"That seems warranted," he said after a quick bit of mental addition. "Orléans' Commandant Paoli base is what, ten hours away?"

"Actually, they're going to get Blaster to Commandant Paoli by helicopter cargo lift, and then Ironhide will take a C-130 from there to Keflavik and hand him and Jetfire off to Ratchet. That's roughly sixteen hours round trip instead of twenty."

"All right, then," Keller replied, satisfied. "Let's look at the main matter. Do we have any further information about the nature of this allegedly imminent invasion?"

"Not yet," she replied. "When Ironhide called in earlier, he said he'd spoken with Jetfire long enough to satisfy himself as to his identity – he's worked with him before – but Jetfire couldn't be more specific and needed to talk with Prime face to face."

"Worried about being hacked?"

"No, sir." Maggie frowned, gently biting her lip a moment before she set her headphones down on her desk, and rose, glancing quickly about. Keller, seeing this, automatically stepped in close.

"What is it?" he demanded in a low voice.

"Sir, I'm not sure," she replied, and gave him a significant look. "It's more a feeling than a theory, even."

Keller snorted. "A feeling?" She nodded. He sighed. "Well, let's hear it anyway."

"It's just..." Maggie hesitated, then grimaced as she spread her hands slightly. "I got the impression from Ironhide that even though he's willing to trust that Jetfire is who he says he is, Jetfire isn't willing to trust Ironhide."

"He thinks Ironhide's a fake?"

"No, I don't think so. Ironhide was clear – they talked for a time about some particular missions they'd gone on together. Apparently, the level of detail would be hard even for Cybertronians to fake in real time, and some of what they discussed were events that had no witnesses – or else the witnesses were killed before the end of the mission. It doesn't seem to be a case of overweening caution about mistaken identity," Maggie said. "But Jetfire won't talk to Ironhide – he wants to speak with Prime in person." She shook her head. "I just get the feeling that there's some sort of problem out there, within the Autobots – that something's gone more wrong than we'd thought."

Keller considered this depressing possibility. Trouble in the Autobot ranks was a scenario they hadn't really addressed, since even if there were some sort of division over leadership or resources, Autobot ideology tended to take a stance towards less technologically developed 'wetware' species that was at least neutral rather than hostile. If Maggie were right, however, and there were something wrong, something that might cause silence between old compatriots even in the face of imminent invasion...

"What's Prime doing right now?" he demanded.

"He's dealing with the diplomats – trying to convince them that they need to start committing militarily to present a united front."

Keller, after a moment, nodded. "All right, I'm not going to jeopardize that. But I want to talk with him as soon as possible. Meantime, get me a list of everyone who _hasn't _committed some troops and equipment, and anyone Prime's been in contact with already. If they haven't said 'yes' yet, we'll keep trying. Also, see what Gonzales over at NBEIRR European division has on the situation."

"Yes, sir."

"And if you have any more... intuitions," he said finally, "tell me."

Maggie nodded, smiling slightly. "Yes, sir."

With that, Keller headed for his office, where he settled in his chair and logged into his workstation to find quite the barrage of e-mails and attached reports awaiting him. Maggie's topped the list, and he downloaded it, and also the reports of two of his fellow directors. And since he had Ironhide's report in hand, Keller quickly looked through it until he found the model types, and then ran an inquiry with the Cybertronian medical database that Ratchet had put together for them.

Jetfire's specs were straightforward enough, provided one ignored the "organs" devoted to such things as generating 'grav hooks' by which to 'catch' wormhole termini and take advantage of their faster-than-light travel, or the ones dedicated to sophisticated weaponry and self-repair. He was a jet, basically.

Blaster, however, seemed less easy to classify. Keller wasn't entirely sure what he was, but it wasn't a jet or any vehicle, and... it appeared he was a "carrier": he had a symbiont. And he was a mark two !elvox, eighteenth generation – an older model, even by Cybertronian standards, though from the notes in Ironhide's report, there'd been some modifications that went beyond what could be encompassed under the official gradations of model evolution.

A comm officer and a jet. Immense firepower coupled with maneuverability on the highest of high grounds short of space – and then a communications technician. Keller frowned. There were certainly situations in which you would find a comm specialist and a fighter jet working together: landing fields, for instance, or combat controllers helping to guide pilots in to their targets and establish landing zones for them. Yet neither of those scenarios made sense of this pair of Cybertronians. Why these two together? Or had they been part of a larger team that hadn't made it to Earth intact?

Was that how they knew attack was imminent? Blaster's injuries certainly made it plausible...

But all that was sheer speculation, and in the absence of more decisive evidence, of some kind of description of what they were facing, it could hardly lead anywhere productive. Phone calls, however, might win them desperately needed allies. With a sigh, Keller pulled up his list of recalcitrant powers, compared it with the list of those already contact by Prime, and picked up his phone.

As he did so, one of the staffers appeared with a coffee pot. He poured Keller a cup, then departed, leaving the pot atop the low bookshelf. As Keller waited for someone to pick up, he took a sip of coffee, and held the cup up, watching as Hobbes transformed into the monstrous Leviathan.

_Hobbes's ghost, _he thought, staring at the list of the uncommitted. _Damn revenants!_

* * *

Meanwhile, in a still dark dorm room, lit by a single lamp, Sam Witwicky sat at his desk, sipping coffee and listlessly reviewing his notes one more time. _So going to flunk_, he thought. Studying last night at Woodstock's hadn't been wholly useless – part of the headache apparently had been from hunger. But not all of it had been; consequently, his stomach had felt off the rest of the night, and like Scrooge, the evening's meal had followed him into his dreams, as had test anxiety.

Sam had watched himself running past pyramids, following the trail of integrals and diffy q's that had slithered like snakes beneath the sand, where they'd gibbered and squealed, until suddenly they'd burst into view, and he'd realized they were actually power lines. The hissing lines had knotted themselves into a strange face full of angles, with glowing eyes, and which had shrieked an electronic chorus, at which point he'd wakened to the unhappy knowledge that his test was in two hours.

Coffee at least should keep him awake through it, but the headache remained, though it had faded to a dull ache as opposed to yesterday's persistent stabbing pain. Regardless, it would be a distraction that would slow him down and that would mean getting a later start on vacation. Sam sighed, and glanced round his dorm room at the half-packed bag and clothing scattered everywhere. He still had to pack before heading home...

Sam shook his head, winced, and ran his hands through his hair. _Focus_, he told himself. Calculus was in twenty minutes, and he had ten minutes to get across campus to class. Which meant, as he glanced at the time on his alarm clock, that he really ought to be leaving now. Downing the rest of his coffee, he stuck the cup in the bathroom sink under the faucet, ran water for two seconds, then grabbed his backpack and departed.

He stepped out of Bixby hall into a grey world: there was mist in the air, and an autumnal cool that was out of step with yesterday's heat. It appeared Fall was finally making an appearance. Sam headed east, cutting through the parking lot so he could rap on 'Bee's hood – it'd become a daily ritual, that private little greeting. "Wish me luck," he muttered as he passed.

He hadn't made it across the parking lot when his cell phone vibrated. Sam pulled it out of his pocket to find a text message waiting for him:

_Good luck, _it read, _and don't be surprised by anything that happens. Just go with the flow._

Sam frowned at that, feeling a little thrill of fear work its way into midterm anxiety. _Go with what flow? What's going to happen?_ he wondered, and found himself glancing over his shoulder. 'Bee, however, just sat there, a hazy yellow shape disappearing beneath the shroud of mist. Only somewhat relieved, for surely if something dangerous were lurking about, 'Bee wouldn't have been so cryptic, or so still, Sam continued on his way.

Wellman Hall emerged from the wet grey of the day like a ghost, and its corridors were filled with the anxious, exhausted squirming and muttered chatter of haggard students. Sam found his own classroom nearly filled to capacity, save for the front row, and so he slunk forward to claim one of its empty seats for his own. Settling himself, he pulled out scratch paper and a small army of pencils and erasers. His calculator he set carefully forward on the pitiful excuse for a desk. And then he waited for Dr. Temple's graduate assistant to arrive.

At precisely five 'til eight, the assistant arrived bearing a depressingly thick stack of papers, which she handed to the first student in the front row. Sam dutifully took a copy of the midterm when it was passed to him and handed the stack on. The assistant was writing instructions on the board, and Sam kept half an eye on her as he skimmed the exam. Nothing too threatening on the first page, at least...

At just that moment, a fire alarm sounded. Like a wave, heads popped up as students sat upright, rigid and wide-eyed. The graduate student stood at the front of the class, looking equally stunned, while out in the hall, the thud of booted feet could be heard. The door to the classroom burst open to admit two men in firefighting gear.

"Ladies and gentlemen," one of them said, "please quickly take your belongings and follow us – we have a hazardous chemical spill on campus, and we need to evacuate you to a safe location in the city. Let's have everyone stand up calmly and follow Mr. Burris and myself outside – no running, no pushing, but if you feel ill at any point, please speak up and we'll get you to a paramedic. Let's go!"

That broke the general paralysis, and there was a flurry of scraping chairs and alarmed murmuring as everyone hastily gathered up backpacks and grabbed calculators, hurrying out into the hall after the two firefighters. Sam followed the general exodus, though that earlier twinge of fear had transmuted into deep suspicion, which transformed again into a sense of vindication when, as he exited the building, a pair of men in black jumpsuits approached and fell in step with him. They wore oxygen masks round their necks, and insignia vaguely suggestive of some sort of biotechnological company, and but for the matte black guns and holsters strapped discreetly to utility belts, they might have been first responders with some chemical company.

"Samuel Witwicky?" one of them asked.

"Yeah?" he replied.

"Come with us, please." This being said with a flash of a badge, which Sam caught just enough glimpse of to recognize the double star logo.

"Always glad to help the neighbors out," he muttered, and swallowed the temptation to protest. One of the men immediately dropped back behind him, sandwiching Sam between the pair of them, though Sam found himself nervously looking from side to side, wondering whether Barricade were going to come screaming out of the haze to gun the lot of them down. Or maybe he would just lob the Cybertronian version of a Molotov cocktail and sit back to watch the explosions from a distance...

However, other than dodging the streams of university students and personnel being guided to buses and National Reserve personnel carriers, they encountered no difficulties or dangers. Not a single emergency vehicle transformed, and the four choppers circling overhead appeared to be just what they seemed, as well. His guides led him north to the North Entry Parking Structure, where a familiar yellow Camaro was parked, along with some truly heavy armored personnel carriers and the ubiquitous black government SUVs.

Leaning against the Camaro, however, was a young man wearing Sam's clothes and a face passably similar to his own that broke into a grin at sight of him. Through the window, Sam could see a rifle on the passenger's seat that likely was loaded with sabot rounds.

"Hey, kid," Sam's doppelgänger said, and clapped his shoulder. Sam staggered a bit under the weight of that blow; probably the other knew about thirty different ways to kill another human being for all his cheerful collegiate look. Probably, he was a marine or one of the ex-Sector Seven special ops people snapped up by NBEIRR, and as he climbed into the car, the APCs were quick to start up. "Ride safe," the Camaro's driver said, and then backed out of his spot, turned neatly, and headed out, with an escort of armed vehicles trailing behind him.

"Mr. Witwicky, if you would? We've got to get you to your drop point and your car," one of his escorts said, and gestured for him to get in to one of the SUVs.

"Where are we going?" Sam asked, still a bit wary.

"Not far – down to the South Entry garage. Now," the man said, as Sam climbed into the car, and the rest of his escort piled in, "here are the rules: when we get you to your car, you get in, wear this cap – " the second agent reached into one of several trouser pockets and produced one, which he tossed to Sam.

"This is _my _Dodgers cap," he protested, and scowled at the pair. "You broke into my room!"

The agent did not grace this with an answer, merely continued giving instructions: "Wear the cap pulled down to hide your face as much as possible. Let your 'brother' do the driving, and don't make any calls while you're on the road. When you get home, pick up your parents and head for base. Clear?"

"And what are you guys going to be doing?" he demanded.

"Oh, we'll be around, never fear," the other replied, and smiled thinly.

"Yeah, sure you will be. C'mon, what's going on?" he tried again.

"You'll be debriefed by your brother. Mr. Witwicky," the man said, seriously, "rest assured, this is not a drill or a joke or a trick. You got your brother's message this morning? Good," he said, when Sam, after a brief hesitation, nodded. "Then trust him and the fact that he's got better EW than we do. Clear?"

Sam stared at him a moment. Then: "Yeah. Clear." _As mud_, he added to himself. But if they knew about 'Bee's message, then it had to be the case that they were working with him – nobody had cracked Autobot encryption yet. So he sat back and watched the empty and emptying buildings pass by, until they reached the southeast edge of campus, where their driver pulled into the South Entry Parking structure, as promised. And there crouched a yellow robot, who stood up as much as he could, ducking his head to keep from hitting the ceiling, when they arrived.

As soon as the doors to the SUV were unlocked, Sam practically leapt out the car, ignoring the jarring that made his head ache. Not to say that he didn't trust NBEIRR, but he still had bad memories of black SUVs. "'Bee!"

"Get in," his guardian ordered, transforming swiftly into Camaro form and flinging a door open for him. Sam slung his backpack into the back seat, and then, glancing down at the cap in his hands, decided he could make nice to the agents. After all, they weren't really Sector Seven anymore. So he pulled it on, and, glancing over his shoulder at them, tugged the rim down as far as he could plausibly get away with while driving. One of the agents gave him a thumbs up.

"We'll hang back," the other said, speaking to 'Bee this time. "The team rendezvous is the freeway entrance."

With that, they slipped back into the SUV, and Sam, realizing instruction time was over, slid into the driver's seat. 'Bee closed the door and made for the nearest exit, and as they pulled onto the road, Sam craned his neck to watch as the unmarked SUVs fell in behind 'Bee.

"So... not that I'm questioning the division of labor, but what if Barricade does hit us with missiles?" Sam ventured to ask.

"It's unlikely. This isn't about Barricade," his guardian replied. "We've taken precautions anyway, though: we've got a passable imitation of a Cybertronian generator in the other car – it'll read like a 'bot with a use-worn set of sensor dampeners. It won't fool anyone who looks closely, but hopefully, if anyone does decide to lob a missile, he'll want to act quickly and take that at face value."

"Oh. Okay." Sam paused. "What do you mean, this isn't about Barricade?"

"Just that. Sam, we've had two 'bots land this morning in Paris, and they've sent out an emergency alert warning of imminent attack. It looks as though we were wrong about how long it would take for a retaliatory force to cross to Earth," 'Bee said, grimly.

"How can you be wrong about that?" Sam protested. "I mean, there's space, there's time, and a lot of it between us and you – that hasn't changed!"

"I'm afraid we haven't had the full debriefing yet. But at a guess, the space-bridge networks were closer to tapping this region's wormholes than we'd imagined more than a hundred years ago, when we made it to the fringes of this area of the Outer Gap. If that's so, then they could be in a position to bring a massive force through inside of a week, potentially."

"A week?" Sam repeated, weakly.

"Yes."

The headache was threatening to join forces with the fear in the pit of his stomach, and if they did, it was going to get... messy. Sam shut his eyes and breathed deeply. "So we're basically at war as of right now."

"We're on alert and moving towards a war footing. We'll know more soon."

"Any chance," Sam asked without much hope, "that I won't be wearing a big bright target for this?" When Bumblebee did not reply immediately, he groaned. "Great!"

"I'll get you through this," 'Bee vowed quietly.

"Like hell!" Sam muttered. "You and what army? I was at Mission City, too, you know."

Another long pause, and then again: "Sam, I will see you through this," 'Bee insisted. "I promise you that."

And there was an edge to his voice that brought images boiling up from the scarred wells of memory – images of 'Bee, making an incredible dive to save him and Mikaela. Of 'Bee, trying to protect the two of them from Sector Seven on the L.A. River – and trying, too, by his own visibility, to keep his own commander from capture, no matter what the cost. Of 'Bee, half in shock, battered, scraped, his paint blistered in patches, and legless, crawling from beneath the wreckage of a truck in Mission City.

Sam squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing at his temples, but the images persisted, and he felt his face heat. _Way to go, moron,_ he thought, suddenly angry with himself and feeling about two inches tall. _Great job!_

"God, I feel like crap," he declared. "You got any barf bags on you?"

"Are you going to throw up?" 'Bee sounded alarmed, and the driver's side window cracked open just a bit.

"Maybe later," Sam replied, slouching down in his seat. And he waved a hand listlessly before hanging it artlessly off the steering wheel. "You probably shouldn't listen to me," he continued, as carelessly as he could manage, and drew a breath, let it out heavily, before admitting: "I get kind of cranky and out of it when I'm... um... sick."

So there, he'd said it. Sam held his breath, waiting on reaction.

For a few minutes, Bumblebee said nothing, possibly because they were approaching the on ramp, and merging was always something to watch, even if you were an intelligent alien Camaro, especially when you were supposed to pick up and stay with three government SUVs. 'Bee signaled right, hit the ramp and accelerated smoothly, dodging around a sad little four-cylinder Camry, and cutting easily into traffic. In the rearview mirror, Sam could see one of the SUVs following them, and a glance in the side-view mirror showed the other two hanging back one lane over.

"Looks like they made it," he offered.

"NBEIRR has some good people."

"Yeah, seems like it. Are, uh, are we all clear?" Sam asked, a little nervously.

"Nothing in the air that I can pick up, and nothing around us, though with as much EM flux as a freeway gives off, it's harder to tell."

"Great. Good. But, are we clear?" Sam asked again, stressing that last just a little.

This time, 'Bee just laughed, engine revving. "Yes, Sam," his guardian answered, "we're clear."

Grinning crookedly, Sam settled into the comfortable curve of the seat. "Glad to hear it."

"But you're still seeing the base medics, and as soon as Ratchet checks in and can spare a minute, I want him to look you over as well. And I'm telling your mother."

Sam groaned. "'Bee!"

The only response was a Camaro's laughter, which was soon lost to the roar of the freeway.

* * *

**Author's Note: **_Defensor Hominis et Hospitum: _Defender of humanity and of strangers.


	4. Black and White

**Chapter three: Black and White**

Houston's Second Ward marched its warehouses and industrial architecture right up to the waterfront of the bayou. Huge complexes sprawled over the land, and what with the planet's economic problems, not all of them were in use. Not officially, anyway.

Unofficially, number twenty-two oh five B had been supporting an alien squatter for the past sixteen months. Warehouse twenty-two oh five B and a handful of other abandoned sheds, garages, overpasses, and old, abandoned farmsteads in and out of Houston and a few other neighboring cities and states kept Barricade out of sight of prying eyes, whether human or Autobot. He rotated between them on a random basis, and kept a careful watch on the dummy accounts that he used whenever he absolutely had to interact with suppliers – in a society of hostiles, he would leave no traces. No traces that led anywhere. He was an infiltrator; he knew the rules of this game.

_Focus._

Barricade stood in the middle of the warehouse, surveying the oil-stains, then tapped the side of his head and the retinal holoprojectors flared to life, covering the floor of the warehouse. America. Canada. Mexico. China. The members of the OAS. Saudi Arabia. The EU. Turkey. Russia. All Africa's nations. The world spread out beneath his feet, and began to blossom with lights: red light – nuclear resources; green light – petroleum fields; orange light – refineries; purple – military bases. Black circles and lines marked major transportation sites – roads, railways, airports, harbors; white stars for major government sites.

And on the coast of California, in the northwestern corner, a symbol from another world: the Autobot sigil. Tranquility, and its base.

Three and a half years of research before any of his team had landed. Starscream and Blackout had dug in as deep as they could into the military nets, adding black ops sites, R&D, government safe sites to the list. He'd seen over three quarters of the American civilian sites, mapped them himself; Brawl and Bonecrusher had done the rest, checking the military sites, making notes, and the picture had slowly unfolded.

_Focus._

Seventeen months since Mission City. Fifteen since he'd put himself back together enough to work. Fifteen months since he'd been able to think straight, to move straight... that damn divider, and _Primus, Frenzy_...!

_Focus_.

Lines of glyphs began to come up over certain of the targets as secondary projectors engaged – field reports: layout options, site security, weaknesses, priorities... gaps.

There were gaps in the records. Holes in the files saved on his personal databanks – glyphs were missing. Sites were likely missing. And over the entire map, save for a few, isolated instances, there was no trace of one particular mind's work – Frenzy's work was gone. Frenzy... Frenzy was gone.

Barricade's engine gave a strange, choking rev, but the image remained, blazing bright in all its damning incompleteness. It remained, because he was an infiltrator – he was Megatron's infiltrator, the best the Decepticons had to offer, and he knew the rules.

Rule one: _do not lose control_.

Something chittered, and the map seemed to swell and waver as something scurried across the floor, light reflecting off its plating. A familiar energy field touched the edges of his own as Scorponok swarmed about his legs, made the air seem to tremble and shiver in conjoint systems, empty the past seventeen months.

After a moment, Barricade, venting heat and the painful little thrill of that electrical tingle, let the holo-image die, and sank down to crouch on the stained, concrete floor. Scorponok clicked, lifting himself partially to tap his foremost pair of legs anxiously against Barricade's knees, sensing his mood, and Barricade could feel the subtle EM thrum and vibration of the symbiont's response that, were they joined, would have done much, no doubt, to calm him.

They couldn't join, though – of course not. They weren't made for each other – Scorponok was just shy of half his mass, and at full length, tail included, normally would be nearly as long as Barricade was tall. With the stub that remained of that appendage after Qatar, in his primary mode, he could just barely fit in Barricade's cab with the seats down. All their conjoint structures were just utterly dissimilar in nearly every respect, sized and located for completely different partners.

But lacking a spark chamber of his own to confine and keep a spark coherent and protected, Scorponok couldn't have survived a month without syncing with his carrier. Barricade, still in shock and mourning his own symbiont's loss, had suffered something close to panic when he'd realized he _had_ to sync with Blackout's bereaved symbiont or lose him. Not only were they misfits for each other, but it had just been entirely too soon: he'd been injured still himself, struggling to recover, caught up in his own agonized sense of having lost himself, and the powerful protective habits of a long lifetime at war had left him totally unprepared to lay himself that open to anyone.

In the end, though, he'd done it – they were the only two of their kind left on Earth; it would have been foolish to throw away help. And killer though Barricade undeniably was, even he had his limits – Blackout had risked serious repercussions to reinterpret his orders and stop on that freeway to help him. He'd entrusted Barricade with what was dearest to him, because he knew Barricade understood that drive to protect the symbiont who was one's other self. Despite all their differences and disagreements, they had had that bond in common, being both carriers. He could not have allowed Scorponok, therefore, simply to spiral down into degenerative incoherency and expire.

Syncing had its side-effects, however incompatible they otherwise were, the most evident one being a greater sensitivity to each other's moods and minds, a more thorough coordination with each other. And though sometimes it felt like being burned from within, Scorponok filled an absence that could not but ache to shattering. Hence even though they weren't joined, Barricade found his frustration and grief subsiding to more bearable levels, and he berated himself: neither he nor Scorponok could afford this sort of episode if they wanted to survive.

"Damn you, Starscream," he growled nevertheless. Scorponok chirruped, transmuting it into a low, threatening hum, echoing his sentiment. Blackout, too, had never been fond of Starscream, had never been able to trust a loyalty less personal than his own – border planet provincials were often like that, given how small colony populations often were. And though it was not quite fair to say that symbionts followed their carriers in everything, it was true that it was rare for a symbiont to have a radically different opinion of a person than his carrier.

Barricade wasn't hampered by the need for loyalty such as Blackout's – he and Starscream had that in common – but he had his own problems with Megatron's lieutenant. His attitude towards symbionts and their carriers aside, Starscream tended to take a fine-grained approach to tactics and strategy. While detail and nuance had their worth, once the picture had been sufficiently complicated, he tended then to overthink the solution – either he went for wholly unnecessary layers of subtlety, or else he struck with overwhelming force to eliminate the complexity he'd just introduced.

He could be brilliant – sometimes more so even than Megatron. And he could also sink an operation under more layers of whim and complexity than anyone Barricade had ever known, just because he wanted something and wouldn't hesitate to reach for it, unless someone or something grounded him _hard_. He just wasn't a fully reliable tactician, and was too enamored of intrigue and complicated revenge. Kill the 'bot and be done with it, was Barricade's philosophy – or use him well, but choose your time and don't make an unrelated vengeance a turning point of crucial operations against outsiders!

Still, Starscream was eloquent and powerful, and if he were at the head of the approaching invading army that the Autobot alert had warned of, then Barricade was betting on a straightforward investment of overwhelming force against this planet and its people, and the Autobots they harbored. He wouldn't waste subtlety on them, not after the Allspark. In principle, Barricade had no particular problem with that, but he knew the Autobots and humanity were unlikely to be the only targets – his icon hadn't gone dark during Mission City. Starscream knew he'd been alive seventeen months ago, and Barricade did not expect his absence from that battle would be subject to forgiveness. And in Decepticon ranks, one learned not to mourn those designated "traitors."

If it were Starscream, then, he was most likely going to die on this sponge of a back-burn rock, and Scorponok with him, and he needed to decide how to face that. Barricade vented gently.

_Focus. _

He had two choices, so far as he could see, neither of them very good: he could remain an independent agent, avoid conflict where he could, kill where he had to, and try to stay underground until Decepticon firepower stripped the planet bare. Or he could try to find allies in the locals... and so inevitably in their protectors.

Unfortunately, the former plan was unlikely to work, once the Autobots lost – assuming they did. He had no way off this planet, and even he couldn't hide forever, not when Starscream would set every 'bot Barricade had ever worked with in the field the task of hunting him. Besides, Barricade had never aspired to any form of "neutrality": it just was not in his nature.

But the latter plan made every coil in him clench in protest – surely he could not countenance allying himself with those who had accepted the genocide, Samuel Witwicky! Did he care so much for his own life after so often hazarding it, that he could contemplate such an association, with so little chance of it actually succeeding and allowing him to live?

Did he have no self-respect?

No, he had self-respect, he thought bleakly. He had pride. But the aftermath of Mission City and the months of hiding and isolation had not been without effect. He was a member of a dying species, and he'd been cut off from all help, left to manage on his own by a wing commander who could at least have radioed to demand an explanation before abandoning him, but hadn't.

Barricade did not like to think that his own horizons were so narrow as to let what happened in his own cohort blind him to the larger picture, to the needs of the cause. Yet objectively speaking, that was a line that couldn't truly be drawn – not now that Megatron was gone. The very fact that he had to think that way – that the problem, the main problem, was that Megatron was gone, _when his entire species had just been handed a death sentence _– was proof of that. Any right-thinking mind ought to be preoccupied with the question of how settle the war, so they could at least stretch their time in this universe as long as they could. No one had seen every star in this galaxy, let alone the others – they should be looking for the origin of the Cube, to see whether there were any chance of second chances. They should be drawing borders, negotiating a settlement into two Cybertronian states: Autobot and Decepticon.

Instead, Barricade greatly feared that with Megatron gone, the factional tendencies of the Decepticon ranks – tendencies that had grown up early among the militant wings of the old underground as a part and parcel of their resistance to the notion that one had a right to tell them their place by reading it off of their model instead of by _proving _it, and which was deeply embedded in them all – would result in a meltdown that would claim just as many lives to halt as to maintain.

Starscream certainly believed so – and so he'd abandoned Barricade, though in point of fact, what could he truly have hoped to accomplish, other than to tear whatever fragile peace might have been attained in his absence to shreds by pushing his own claim? A lag time of ten, twenty years was nothing to build on, yet that hadn't stopped Starscream. Only Megatron had power and prestige enough to have stopped him cold.

And Megatron was dead.

Clearly, though, if an army were already on its way, already poised to arrive, then the situation was not quite as anticipated. Yet that brought him no joy, nor relieved any of his fears, for Barricade was betting he could interpret this sign, and he cursed his own compatriots, then, and even Megatron for having failed to find some other way for Decepticon-kind. For putting him in this position.

Because he was betting that the Autobots didn't have this problem: whoever had survived to be commander-general in Prime's absence – Prowl, or Silverbolt, or Ultarax, or any of the other regional commanders – probably wasn't busy putting down rebellion in his own ranks. He didn't think that Prime was particularly concerned that the Autobots would _never _come for his stranded squad, or that if they did, it would be only to eliminate the lot of them. He wasn't so naïve as to think the Autobots had no dissent within their ranks, but they didn't have the drive to push it to the end as a matter of course that one found among Decepticons – which meant they probably were trying to decide how best to survive in the days to come.

That gave him something in common with them – it gave him more in common than he wanted to admit, but there it was. He had everything he needed – information they could use and his own insider's familiarity with Decepticon protocols and comm encryption – to make a bid to join them, but he couldn't do it. Not yet – not after so long at war against them, and there was the Witwicky boy – he'd pulled that much off of the American military radio chatter. And dammit, he was Decepticon! He owed them something – the benefit of the doubt, perhaps. Or perhaps he owed it to himself – to what serving that cause had let him become – to do this thing right.

_Focus._

He needed to discover whether he was right about what was happening within the Decepticon ranks; whether he was right to fear for his life, whether he was right to fear for the future in their hands. But how to do that? In case he _was_ right to fear for his life, he didn't dare simply send up a signal for them to try to trace. He needed a meeting, and not one preordained and planned out by whoever was in control of this... 'exercise.' How to get that time and face to face if he couldn't ask for it?

He thought of all the targets they'd identified in the world – any competent commander would be planning an attack that would hit nuclear facilities, energy resources, and military bases. But Barricade wasn't looking to make contact in the middle of a pitched battle; and he didn't want to meet with an occupational force that could take him out as easily as storm the next town.

An isolated 'bot was what he needed – somebody he could hold his own with, and he needed to deal with that someone before the heavy guns came out and the real shooting began. How to do it? Where would Decepticon command, whoever held that position, send its infiltrators?

Where would _he_ send infiltrators, were it up to him?

Any of the government sites would be good bets, but not certain, and cities were large. He couldn't afford to lose time in an extravagant search.

Scorponok whined softly, mandibular grapples clicking against each other, adding to the little vocal pops he made. Though not made for speech, Scorponok could manage a few words, and the whine, plus the strategic clicks formed a familiar, if alien, pattern: _"Oueeeee-tkt-oueee-k!t-iiiiiiiii._"

Barricade revved softly. Samuel Witwicky. Bane of his existence and of his entire kind. There would certainly be an assassin on his trail. But he didn't want to be seen as getting in the way of that by disrupting the agent's plans; if he did find reason to rejoin his Decepticon comrades, he didn't want his own participation in the hit (which would certainly be required as proof of commitment) to seem contingent, or it would undoubtedly gain him nothing with command.

But Scorponok was right in a way – he had to get close to Witwicky, which meant getting close to the Autobots. That meant Tranquility, where the Autobots had settled just because it was close to their genocidal ally. For any Decepticon commander would want to try to get a read on the base they'd built up in the seventeen months since Mission City before attacking it. And that meant sending infiltrators.

Venting gently, Barricade settled onto the floor and transformed one hand into his gun.

_Focus. _

He would go over every inch of his armaments today and tonight, and Scorponok's as well, and give himself another day to repair any damages or imperfections to the best of his ability. He would have exactly one shot at this, and then either he was in and committed to the Decepticon objective, or he would have to kill his source. Either way, he needed to make certain he could rely on his weaponry. Rule one:_ do not lose control_.

_Focus. _

Two short-range, three-shot missile tubes. Two sets of plasma launchers. One energy cannon. Two flails.

He had the maps. He was familiar with Tranquility. He had an objective; he knew his options and so he had his checklists. He even had help – Scorponok hummed softly, having positioned himself to watch the entry to the warehouse, his antennae up and listening. Tomorrow night, he promised himself.

Tomorrow night, it would begin.


End file.
